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How To Raise The IQ Of Your Business (And Why)

When the dinosaurs disappeared, they left a power vacuum. Their place was taken by species with energy needs based on brains, not muscle.

The “brains-over-brawn” cliché has never been more pertinent. As businesses reach out for our custom, the ones who succeed are those who “work smarter, not harder” (this too is a cliché).

We’ve been using these phrases in corporate training for a long time. Both clichés imply fundamental changes in how marketing is done and how a business grows. But change usually only happens when there’s no other alternative…

The mass scaling of marketing and lower-cost advertising allowed companies to reach beyond their geographic catchment areas. It made it possible to use global interest in their products as a lever: to drive up brand equity and increase demand.

All these are wins for enterprise. But they are also dumb: They rely on brute force, not brains.

During this time, the marketplace has shifted. As businesses scaled up to do what they’ve always done—only more so—their customer base changed.

Marketing Persona Profiles No Longer WorkWhen traditional marketing methods deliver diminishing returns, the suggestion is that the disconnect occurs at the company/customer interface.

You see, marketing works only after a connection is made with a potential customer. The fact that the connection is harder to make indicates that there needs to be an evolution in how businesses establish their reputation and authority and in how they gain the trust of their customers.

The checkbox approach of marketing persona profiles is now no longer enough. In a semantic web, the companies that succeed are the ones that are capable of embracing change and developing new approaches.

Five Marketing Tools At Your DisposalThe change being experienced is one of culture, not technology. It will take a big shift in thinking to deal with it successfully.

The smart companies at the forefront of this change do a number of things differently. Here are five ways you can join them:

1. Empower Your People When employees are seen as an integral part of the business and the way it works, they’re equally invested in its marketing and the way it presents itself to the outside.

2. Talk To Your Audience Not everyone whom a business talks to will be a customer or prospect. Some of them will be brand advocates, who can bring referrals without themselves buying into the product or service—for a variety of reasons.

But all of them are a brand’s audience. And talking to them requires some pretty introspective thinking, beforehand.

3. Respect Your Customers Every company says that it has a huge respect for its customers. Few however will go to great lengths to get them to trial their products and services for free. And even fewer will talk to them in a way that produces a sense of shared values and social goals.

Nor does every company use technology to personalize the customer experience through the smart use of data. But the companies that do, win customer loyalty—at a time when marketers lament its demise as a concept.

4. Challenge Yourself No one really likes change. It’s disruptive, expensive and bad for business. But change that happens when it must is the only option for moving forward.

The traditional approach of seeing a business as separate from its social environment isn’t producing the returns it once did. To produce sufficient agility, you need closer integration and an internal change in company structure.

It Really Isn’t Rocket ScienceNone of this is difficult to understand. But its application requires a real focus on fundamentals, a willingness to embrace change, and a desire to accept that no job is easy any more. But if we go to work to boost our ego, build our reputation, and accumulate power, these changes will fail.

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This is really interesting stuff. I’m really interested in the way that conversations within a company, between the company and a wider audience and the company and its customers is so often disconnected. I’m a strong advocate for one message, but it happens so infrequently.

I’ve always thought that ThinkGeek are an absolute paragon of this. All their communication with their customers feels so totally authentic because they /are/ their own customers. It’s not just intelligence that they display, it’s also the emotional connection they have with customers like me – I truly feel like this retailer and I care about and enjoy the same things.

When I interviewed their social media manager for a piece a whole back it was clear that this wasn’t a deliberately devised strategy based on data analysis. Instead it came from a strong internal culture of fun, enthusiasm, passion and sharing. Geekery, in short!